Dalot – Flight sessions EP
This one nearly got past me. The car is never the best environment to audition promos, particularly when tanking it along the motorways. Necessity forces it though. The clock keeps ticking and the CD stack grows ever more skyward. Ask any editor and they’ll nod wearily. Yet I should know by now, engine noise is no friend to either top or bottom end of any sound mix. A thing of such fragile intricacy as Flight sessions should never have left the house.
Dalot is Maria Papadomanolaki. (Don’t you just love Greek names? Good job the review quota is baded on number of words not letters.) Typically for an EP, Flight Sessions is a showcase for Dalot’s various talents. Somehow she manages to span electronica, acoustic, post-rock and ambient, often fusing the genres within one track. Less typically the EP is six tracks and a half an hour long. We could argue the for mini-album status but it’ says EP. End of argument.
‘Ambient’ is probably key to unlocking Flight Sessions. These (wordless) compositions are both complex and sparse. There’s a minimalistic ‘less is more’ approach to her work. Opening track ‘sunflight’ pushes five minutes but it barely seems like seconds as it gently twinkles past. ‘Above the rooftops’ remains innocuous despite its beats while ‘eyeburn’ approaches the heartwarming electronica of Hellios . ‘Rewind’ even nods towards vintage Mogwai with it’s reflective strumming and sampled conversation, sirens etc. Here I’ll stop with the ‘this track is this and that track is that’. Why? Because she’s worth more. Somehow Dalot is adding up to more than the sum of her parts. The EP is, in it’s own understated way, quite exquisite. Like drifting through someone elses filigree dream. All positive so far, and yet I get the sense Dalot has more to offer. Whisper it but she could just be another Last Days . A long player will test her and we’ll be waiting. Just don’t take her on any long car journeys.